


Graves

by evil bunny wolf (evil_bunny_king)



Series: you make me feel so criminal [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Season 2, Reconciliation, a lot of Karen dealing, mutual support (eventually)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 04:11:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6688648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil%20bunny%20wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank Castle - had cared. He’d broken himself <i>caring</i>; he’d <i>loved</i> with a heart she’d only glimpsed beneath his darkness, broken and bleeding as it was.</p><p>She refused to believe that that man could be gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Graves

**Author's Note:**

> Most of this is set pre-Authors, with the exception of the bit that isn't.

Someone had vandalised the Castle family’s graves.

Someone- multiple someones, at multiple times - had spray painted profanity across the grass and kicked over the stones, scrawled ‘whore’ over Lisa Castle’s epitaph and left what looked like human faeces at the head of Frank Jr’s burial plot.

Karen stared at the desecration with a sickening kind of rage twisting in her gut.

It had taken the trial to bring what had happened to his family to light. To even establish that Frank Castle had been a husband, had been a father, through the frenzy of the DA’s witch hunt and now that it was, someone had-

She pressed her hand to her mouth and forced herself to swallow her swell of nausea, the burning lump that had settled in her throat.

She remembered the photograph, the young, bright eyed faces that had beamed from the shadows of a carousel and she had to turn away, heaving dryly onto the verge.

This was wrong. No matter who - or what - Frank was, his family deserved  _better_.

And when she’d recovered herself, wiping her hand across her trembling mouth and forcing herself upright, she set aside the bouquet she’d brought for Elena Cardenas’ grave and set to work.

–

She’d known where Frank’s family was buried from the day that had followed her break-in of his family home. It had been easy to find them, once she’d known the date- she’d found their obituary in the local paper, the two simple lines about Maria that mentioned the children and nothing more, and after a few phone calls that was that: she had the address of the cemetery penned neatly into the case file. She’d even already known the church - they were buried in the same place as Ms Cardenas, it turned out, and she’d wondered just how many times she’d walked past them when she’d visited the kind old woman’s grave, unknowing, oblivious, to the tragedy beneath her feet.

She hadn’t visited them then. It had felt - wrong to: there was nothing she could gain by seeing them, after all, and who was she to mull over their graves, mull over lives she had never known and never would?

She’d filed away the information with the rest of the documents on the Castle case, in the box she kept in her closet; kept it until the case and her article collapsed and suddenly all the research didn’t seem to mean anything, anymore.

–

Each time she visited to place new flowers by the old woman’s grave – not often, but frequently enough; she felt like she should - that _someone_ should remember her - she’d find herself scanning the graves she passed and wondering if Frank still visited his family, too.

His family home was gone, destroyed in a ‘mysterious’ fire - he’d destroyed it on purpose, she knew - but still, when she visited she’d wonder; because with everything she’d come to know about Frank she still didn’t think he could throw away the last of his humanity so _easily_.

Frank Castle - had cared. He’d broken himself _caring;_ he’d _loved_ with a heart she’d only glimpsed beneath his darkness, broken and bleeding as it was and she refused to believe that that man could be gone. Couldn’t believe it, despite what she’d seen, what he’d said and done – not when she’d seen otherwise, once, and even in his ‘code’, in the people he targeted and cleaned from the streets, wasn’t there – wasn’t there something there, still?

She’d watched as he’d dragged the bruised and battered body of his commanding officer into the shed and blown his brains out across the gardening tools.

The cold horror of that night in the forest still followed her. It’d creep over her the same way the chill of the evening would bite into her boots, as subtle and sharp as the first time.

She’d visit Ms Cardenas and she’d pause amongst the stones on the way back to her car, her fingers tucked around her coat sleeves, and stare after the sun as it set over the high-rises.

—

As she knelt down between the graves, scrubbing at the smooth stones with the cleaning supplies she’d driven out to fetch, she tried not to think about anything at all.

She shouldn’t be here. At least when she’d broken into his home she’d had more of an excuse: ignorance, that she was letting herself into a living grave; the justification that she was just trying to uncover the truth, just trying to  _help_. It was naive perhaps; the shambles of the legal system’s handling of the case had made that clear enough, but still, there had been a rational necessity behind what she’d done.

She was not sure what led her here today but it sure as hell wasn’t rational or necessary.

She squeezed out her sponge in the bucket and returned to scrubbing again, hard, ignoring the way her hunched position made her neck burn.

Maybe she was just morbid. Maybe she was obsessed - I’m done, she’d told him at the last; you’re dead to me but he wasn’t, he wasn’t, and she wasn’t either.

Perhaps she was becoming one of those jail brides- one of those women infatuated with danger and tragedy, chasing after murderers as if they could fix them, as if it could mean something.

She gritted her teeth and focused on cleaning the ‘o’ from Lisa’s headstone, banishing the thoughts from her mind.

It didn’t matter. Or rather it did, but she would deal with it later – what _mattered_ was returning the graves to order, so she could leave, so she could turn away and leave them in the peace they deserved (if there was a peace to be found in what came after - she wasn’t so sure, anymore).

She considered calling the police to report the vandalism, but it was a passing fancy. The death of Reyes had alienated the police force as much as the killing spree had alienated the city. His family would find no help, there.

She stayed until the sun had fully set and returned the next morning, shovel in hand, to prop the stones back up, before turning her back once and for all.

If there was peace, she hoped they found it. She even hoped that he would too.

–

The months passed, she and Frank crossed into each other’s lives again and again, and once, in late summer, she saw him there before the graves (they had not been vandalised again since that first time, she’d checked, she’d always checked).

She wouldn’t have recognised him but for the silhouette he cut against the failing light. The breadth of his shoulders, the fit of his jacket - it was familiar even as his posture slumped, relaxed in a long exhale and she hesitated from where she’d been picking her way towards Ms Cardenas’ plot, a bouquet of peonies in her hands.

He looked smaller, somehow, against the grass and headstones.

Things had changed between them but still, she didn’t approach. She had no right to, no more than she had before, and she turned to leave, to let him have this moment with his family.

But when she took that first step away, his voice stopped her.

“Karen.”

She looked at him. He was staring at the stones, head bowed, eyes shadowed in the failing light. He didn’t say anything more.

But she understood, somehow, anyway.

She came to stand beside him, holding the peonies before her. Waited as he stood and breathed and each moment shuddered out of him, almost taking pieces of him away as they went.

They stayed there as the sun set over the high-rises.

 


End file.
